A Million Girls Would Kill For This Job, part 1

How I got into fashion.

If you’d have told any of my middle-school classmates that I would have ended up working in fashion, they would have laughed for hours. After all, I was the bespectacled immigrant kid dressed in weird hand-me-downs who was once nominated for the school’s unofficial Best Dressed award as a joke (who are the adults who approve this sort of thing?). But years later, there I was, at Fashion Week.

During my teenage years, I wanted to be an actor. I spent every minute of my free time writing, but dreaming of becoming a writer seemed like agreeing with my bullies that I was indeed a bookish nerd, whereas becoming a Hollywood star was the ultimate revenge fantasy: I would win an Oscar and swan around in a limo, rich and famous, which would Show Them. My whole life back then revolved around the idea of one day Showing Them.

At Fashion Week, not everyone even gets to sit. Some of us had to spend our first shows in the “standing” spots like the low-grade D-list “guests” we were

The power of lacy undies

I left town at nineteen and actually moved to LA, trying my hand at the acting thing. That’s a story for a different post, but once I realised that this path probably wouldn’t work out, I had no idea what to do with my life. So I went to Italy to learn Italian, and when I say “learn Italian”, I mean eat pizza, drink countless espressos and go out with unsuitable men. To sustain this lifestyle, I got a job at a lingerie store in central Florence (mentioning that you work in a lingerie store is a magnet for unsuitable men, btw). The manager of the store was, among other unpleasant things, obsessed with the shop windows. She would change them a million times per day, never happy. One day, she asked me to change the window. I was terrified. Surely this was a trap. But I did as asked…and was surprised the next day to find that my creation was still up. Apparently, it was to her satisfaction. That was the first time I got to use my creativity at work - ever. And be rewarded for it.

The fashion student slash annoying activist

It was around this time that I realised that there was a fashion school ten minutes from my house.

The idea of working in fashion took hold in my mind, but I wasn’t sure in what capacity. I knew I wasn’t a designer or anything else that involved working with my hands. But what else was there? The school, which towered on a green, steep hill with a stunning view of Florence, also offered marketing courses. That seemed to be the only alternative to being a designer. So I took the admission test and got in.

Throughout my three-year degree, I learned a lot about myself and who I wanted to be in this industry. I would continuously push for a sustainability mindset, even if I had very little knowledge still. I was the only outspokenly anti-fur student in my year, and frequently I would suggest ethical initiatives in our projects, with the slight suspicion that I was getting on everyone’s nerves, including (and maybe especially) the professors. My final thesis was on beauty ideals in the fashion industry, where I attempted to criticise the use of overly thin models and excessive airbrushing. I remember wanting to interview a prominent Italian fashion magazine about their beauty special - and they had agreed. “Do you think all women want to lose weight?” I asked them. “If so, what do you think the role of magazines in that is?” They never responded.

One of the most exciting days of my university career was when one of my most beloved professors took me to Milan Fashion Week. She had an extra ticket to the Missoni show, and I got up at the crack of dawn to take the train from Florence to Milan. I remember the excitement bubbling through my veins all day. Street-style photographers took photos of me! I saw Anna Wintour herself! We even got to go backstage, and I couldn’t stop smiling like a fool.

My favourite classes were PR (I do in fact work in PR today), fashion history, and journalism. It was in the journalism class that I got my start as a journalist, by going up to my professor, who owned a fashion and lifestyle magazine, and asking if I could write for him. With a couple more (unpaid) collaborations under my belt, I ended up graduating as a published journalist, with a new Show Them fantasy: I would become Miranda Priestly. I’d sit front row at Fashion Week. After all, fashion was the ultimate “not a nerd” career. Maybe I couldn’t be rich. I sure as hell couldn’t be pretty. But at least I could write my way to cool status.

It is rude to be late in fashion, but a Fashion Week show never, ever, ever starts on time. In fact, most start around an hour after the planned time slot.

And it seemed like the magazine world was indeed where I was headed. I started my post-university career with a bang by winning a writing competition at Cosmopolitan in Sweden, where I grew up. The prize? An internship at the magazine (is it crazy that we compete for jobs? Yes. Was that the happiest and proudest I’d ever been? Also yes). The universe was screaming “Be a writer!” at me, and I finally listened - for a bit. I ended up ditching fashion briefly while pursuing writing and working evenings in a photo studio to make my rent.

This internship was, to this day, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, work-wise. Cosmo were not about their interns making tea and photocopying. I was writing from day one, assisting on fashion shoots, tagging along at celebrity interviews. I was listened to in brainstorming meetings. My articles were published. At the end of the internship, I was sent off with a bag of goodies from the beauty desk and a freelance contract, which grew into a freelance journalism career with several other national Swedish publications.

But my stay in Stockholm was short-lived, as my then-boyfriend, now-husband and I left for Milan due to some family circumstances (his). So I was back in Italy - in one of the fashion capitals of the world. And I’d be damned if I wouldn’t do my best to get a really, really fashionable job.

Shop Now

A couple of months after landing in Milan, I sat down at a desk in the offices of a large online retailer, where I was the new Junior Online Editor, writing copy for some of the biggest fashion brands in the world. Unexpectedly, I was Showing Them: not even a week after the announcement on LinkedIn, I started getting emails from my former classmates from the fashion school. All acting like we’d been best friends for years, they asked how I was, if I wanted to get together when they came to Milan, and by the way, could they send me their CV? Any way I could share it with my manager?

My manager, by the way, was one of the loveliest, kindest, most intelligent people I’ve ever worked for. She was sensible, respectful, a good listener, and a great role model. Working for her was one of the most memorable parts of this experience, as was my relationship with my colleagues - once I found my people. After sitting through a few lunch breaks with the “fashion crowd”, listening to them deliberate whether to spend Christmas in Paris or the Maldives while I worried about paying for my lunch, I drifted towards the tech guys and web developers. They sneered at fashion and were exceedingly nice, refreshingly funny colleagues and with time, became good friends.

As I was promoted, dropping the Junior from my title, I learned that in some industries and companies, promotions can come without salary increases. Swallowing the bitter pill, I wrote SHOP NOW on a thousand newsletters. I was given tasks such as “promote blue as this season’s on-trend colour…without using the word blue”. I was constantly torn between whether to write “reveal” or “unveil”. I glanced at colleagues’ new Balenciaga bags and then I looked at my payslip. I walked home most nights with a quiet sensation that I finally had what I dreamed of - so why did I feel so empty? I sometimes wondered if this was truly my path. Did I really want my role in the world to be encouraging consumption? Did it really have to be my job to write about dead animal skins all day? Did I really want people to Shop Now?

But hey, it was not all existential angst and catchy CTAs: I also got to go to Fashion Week. Most frequently, it was because some of the higher-ups couldn’t go and tickets got passed on to us. So sometimes, my ticket would have a man’s name on it. One day, I told myself as I sat down in the third row, one day I’d have a ticket with my own name on it.

Opportunity for activism arose here, too. On a weekly basis, our team had a product-edit collaboration with one of Italy’s top fashion magazines according to a theme they provided. I can now reveal (or unveil) that it was me selecting all that product.

On one occasion, the theme was fur.

After staring at my screen for forty minutes plucking up my courage, I went to my manager and politely asserted that I would not be doing this product selection. My voice was shaking, but I knew in my bones that this was my truth. I was just in the process of going vegan and I could not be selecting fur for a living, period. Luckily, my boss was a freaking angel and completely understood, talking the magazine out of doing the fur theme. So, thanks to me, the theme was scrapped. I was reminded of the power of speaking up.

The FashionScout shows in London are dedicated to emerging, up-and-coming designers…and are often just as interesting as the official shows

After nearly two years in the role, I decided to move to London. I was finally going for my magazine dreams, while my husband was setting his sights on the music industry. It stung me to leave my little gang of work buddies. We had a goodbye party in my husband’s and my studio flat on the Navigli. We drank Prosecco and promised to stay in touch. And we did, for a while. But I found that often, friends you make in fashion are like everything else in fashion: temporary. I still watch them from afar, on social media, and wish them all the good things that life has to offer.

My Milan era had come to an end, and I was about to step into my next iteration: the London fashion journalist. Or so I thought.

And that concludes part 1! Come back next week for part 2, to learn about my adventures on London’s fashion scene.

All photos by David Camilli